Vertigo (DC Comics) - Sub-imprints and Brandings

Sub-imprints and Brandings

Over its fifteen-year history, the Vertigo imprint has experimented with a number of different branding, sub-imprint and business practices - some more popular and successful than others. The first - and only - "crossover" between Vertigo titles, 1993-4's The Children's Crusade event, despite comparable preorder numbers of the higher-(double-)priced Annuals, "did not yield smashing results" or garner many positive reviews, in large part due to its "gimmicky" nature, which ran counter to Vertigo's quirky, non-mainstream appeal and customer-base. The event was defended as "no marketing ploy" by one of the event's editors, Lou Stathis, who wrote of his dislike of the often "crass manipulation" of crossover events, defending The Children's Crusade as having come not from marketing, but the writers' minds, and therefore being "story-driven" rather than manipulative. The crossover did not become an annual event, however - indeed, annuals linked to Vertigo series rarely reappeared since this event.